From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 26 2003 - 21:18:29 BST
>JOHNNY
>...I think compassion is that higher state of intellectually realizing
>everyone's
> > equal worth and dignity and that a selfish romantic love comes much more
> > naturally, mixed as it with jealousy and fear and other base emotions.
>
>RICK
>I think this is a bad comparison because you're using a juxtaposing a
>purposely flattering picture of compassion against a purposely unflattering
>picture of romance. I don't think that romantic love implies 'jealousy and
>fear and other base emotions' anymore than I think that compassion implies
>hypocrisy (as some have suggested).
I think compassion implies hypocrisy (as it demands an impossible ideal,
something that can only be strived for and which we all fall short of
achieving, but which we all agree is an ideal) and romantic love is mixed
with biological emotions. I realize that you are saying that by definition
amor is different from eros and agape, I just question whether anything
actually can be put into any of those neat catagories in real life. I think
romantic love and jealousy are hard to discern sometimes.
>Moreover, I don't think compassion *needs* to be 'intellectually realized'
>at all, as I have said, I think it exists quite comfortably on the social
>level.
I think it required philosophy. It required thinking about society as a
whole.
>JOHNNY
>I'm
> > with steve that it's through loving individuals that we first experience
> > love (as a baby and as a species) and then we intellectually apply that
>to
> > people that we learn are our equals.
>
>RICK
>But the love we know as a baby (for our mother I presume you mean) isn't
>'amor'. It's a biological thing. All 'individual loves' aren't alike.
>What makes amor unique is that it is an individual, loving an individual,
>on the basis on their individual characteristics (what Pirsig might call
>their 'ideas') as opposed to merely on the basis of their status as a
>social
>pattern.
Sure, I'd go as far as to say that no individual loves are alike. Some are
80%eros, 10%compassion, etc, 5%convenience, etc...
> > RICK
> > >Moreover, And if you'll go back in this thread to the original
>J.Campbell
> > >quotes I posted, you'd see historical evidence which supports this
>notion.
> > >Notions of agape were written in the scriptures 1000 years before amor
> > >appeared on the scene. How would you explain this chronological
>emergence
> > >if romantic love is 'included, negated and transcended' by compassion?
>
>JOHNNY
> > But the notions of amor didn't need to be written down, they were
> > biologically based.
>
>RICK
>No, you're getting confused with 'eros' again.
Well, that's my point. The troubadors and the greeks may have been the ones
that invented the distinctions, but they didn't invent the idea of two
people loving each other.
>JOHNNY
>They didn't get written down till language and
> > literature were developed enough to support poets and songs, and not
>just
> > religious texts.
>
>RICK
>But didn't you just say that as a species we learned compassion through
>individual love? If that's right, how could the language and literature be
>developed enough to support poems and songs about compassion before it's
>developed enough to support poems and songs of individual love? Did our
>language learn compassion before we did? Now of course, as Sam pointed out
>at the beginning of this thread, lyrics like the "song of solomon" did
>speak
>of individual love (albeit for God). So the vocab for amor was out there.
>It's just that amor itself wasn't...yet.
There was a greater need to write about intellectual ideas of compassion
than there was a need to write about individual love. The static latches
were in place for individual love all over the place in biological and
social patterns. But the intellectual idea of compassion required new
static latches in the form of religious texts. It was a new idea and needed
to be spread somehow. No one needed to spread the idea of people loving one
other person, attraction and jealousy and lust and fear and pride took care
of that. The troubadors perhaps romanticized those base emotions into
something palatible to people who now expected an intellectual basis for
things.
>JOHNNY
> > So the existence of social romantic love doesn't mean you don't have to
>be
> > intellectually compassionate, the existence of compassion doesn't mean
>that
> > you stop being romantic, and the existence of social romance doesn't
>mean
> > that you stop being biologically lustful.
>
>RICK
>Except I don't think romance is principally social or that compassion is
>principally intellectual. I think compassion is social and that romance is
>the more highly evolved pattern (4th level for Sam; top of 3rd-level for
>Pirsig).
What do you make of the idea of compassion coming from realizing the equal
worth of every person?
> > >RICK (to Wim)
> > >Interesting. I see it just the opposite. I think that amor requires
>more
> > >of a conscious choice in the sense that you are now choosing BETWEEN
> > >individuals on the basis of their particular individual
>characteristics.
>
>JOHNNY
> > Cool, I'll take Jennifer Anniston then, or maybe one of the Olson Twins.
>I
> > didn't realize I could choose ANY individual! That's totally awesome.
>
>RICK
>Who are you talking to Johnny? You see my quote... does it say "ANY
>individual"? Of course not. I think you'll find argument is a much more
>difficult and rewarding endeavor when you respond to what your interlocutor
>actually says instead of making up your own responses and then answering
>those. Obviously the choice will be limited to those people whom you
>actually encounter in life in a significant enough way to get to know their
>personality. However, keep those Olson twins dreams alive J because
>improbable as may be... you really never know (just ask Larry Fortensky).
Why not any individual? I'm supposed to settle for someone convenient now?
How do I know when to give up my dream of marrying Ashley and Mary-Kate
Olsen and "choose" someone else?
>take care
>rick
take care
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